This invention relates to isotope separation, more particularly to isotope separation using collisionless magneto-plasma instabilities to slow down ions of a desired species from two counterstreaming, initially neutral beams by which one isotopic species of a given element may be separated from a mixture.
Heretofore other systems, principally gaseous diffusion and centrifuge techniques, have been used to separate isotopes. Such devices involve enormous capital and/or operating expenses, and can be economically justified only in very large scale plants. The reason for this lies in the fact that such techniques exploit the small (typically 1%) difference in the physical masses of the differing isotopes. No absolute separation is in general possible, only a preferential enrichment of one desired isotope. To obtain high concentrations of the latter, requires that the enriched output be recycled many times.